Baseball Historians

A community projection as to how well Jose Lopez would do in 2007 was posted on Minor League Ball yesterday.  I could definitely live with .282/17/78 out of a second baseman.  Now we just have to get the rest of the Mariners to hit around him.

NBCsports.com recently published their Mariners preseason preview and there’s no major surprises in here.  The offense should be good enough but the starting rotation is pretty shoddy.  I expect Felix Hernandez to bounce back especially considering he’s shown up in better shape, but after that, it’s hit or miss.
The final prognosis is that the Mariners won’t [...]

According to ESPN.com’s rumor page, it appears that there’s speculation that Ichiro could hit the trade market sometime in 2007.  This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise because a) the Mariners probably won’t win the AL West and b) Ichiro is in the last year of his contract.  If the Mariners find themselves out of [...]

Arthur Rhodes is coming home.  The 37 year old left hander had his best years in a Mariner uniform and in 2001 and 2002, Rhodes was about as good as you can get with WHIPs of 0.85 and 0.83 respectively.  Since leaving the Mariners, he’s had a pretty tough road though.  He still strikes guys [...]

This isn’t optimistic.  While Bill Bavasi was trying to convey confidence, I didn’t like how this all sounds.  He did say that getting Ichiro locked up was a top priority but he seemed to feel that doing it later was just as good as doing it now.  There’s no doubt that a lot hinges on [...]

This is some good news.  Hernandez had a mixed bag of a season last year.  His strikeout rate was right where it should be but especially in the first half, things didn’t seem to click.  It was particularly annoying to Mariners’ fans because the prospect showed up to camp overweight.
Now, Felix Hernandez has appeared to [...]

This is just one of the many questions that Mariner’s beat writer Corey Brock answers in his mailbag column.  In addition, he touches on a question on why the Mariners shouldn’t put J.J. Putz into the rotation as well as whether Willie Bloomquist has a spot on the team.  Good stuff here.